Kevin, the True Self, and Meerkats (and a bench)
An under-appreciated line in The Princess Bride is when Inigo says, "Let me explain. ... No, there is too much. Let me sum up." That’s a bit about how I feel on this Friday afternoon. There’s been a lot this week. Not bad lot, but just a lot. And a lot that probably most people outside my immediate circle don’t care too much about. So my sum up today is just some photos from the week that spoke to me and then my regular “bench update” along with a bit of short commentary…
This was by far my favorite photo of the week. This man’s name is Kevin and he gave me permission to photograph him. Scout and I were walking by him and just loved seeing him sitting there taking in the sunrise. There was something about the art pieces representing the wildlife at the park, the sunrise, and this man sitting there that just drew me in. There has been a theme of connection that I’ve been hearing in a lot of places this week and connection just radiates from this photo for me. I enjoyed talking to Kevin and finding out that he was sitting there because his wife was out walking and he had just broken a foot so he decided to just enjoy the sunrise while she walked. It was lovely.
There were also two other moments on the same walk that were just lovely - one that I only could have seen in a photograph and the other that the photograph doesn’t come close to showing. I had zoomed way in on this pair of ducks and I love love moments where a photograph shows something that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. This moment of the duck just bringing its bill out of the water and the morning sun reflecting through it. Just lovely.
And then the other which doesn’t come close to what it looked like in person. There was what looked like glistening glitter just shining off the surface of the water all aglow in the golden morning light. Yes some of the glimmers are seen but it isn’t even close to the in-person moment.
And then a few others of the emergence of Spring and the morning light.
This week’s emails from The Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) were so soul-filling as they all shared about finding the “Really Real.” It was about the ways in which we truly go into the deepest places of our true selves to discover who we truly are. Today, Rohr ended the reflection with this, “We are not human beings on a journey toward Spirit; we are already spiritual beings on a journey toward becoming fully human, which for some reason seems harder—precisely because it is so ordinary.”1 He also wrote two sentences that sum up so much of what I have experienced over the last 11 years...”We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”2 As an Enneagram 5 who loves to think I can think myself through everything in life, it has been practicing new ways of living that has continued to change my thinking (and it is still ongoing). These moments above are ones that I probably would not have seen a decade or so ago or, if I did, I don’t know if I would have found a deeper something in them. But it is, as Larry Rasmussen (quoted in these emails on Tuesday) says, “claim the beauty that exists. Let it guide you. Beauty is its own resistance, contending with all that is ugly and chaotic.… If the tumultuous world has not stopped being beautiful, neither has love stopped being love.”3
And then from this afternoon. A trip to the zoo with my college-age daughter and seeing the ever-awesome and ever-amusing meerkats at the Cincinnati Zoo.
And then finally...The Bench over the last week or so...
GPLJ,
Ed
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/facing-reality/
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/facing-reality/
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/a-world-of-beauty/